Spagetti! Cheap and tasty dinner (for 2)

Making dinner for E and myself; our weekly dinner together- scheduled to avoid over-scheduling with significant others ;)

I decided to make tomato sauce and a side of sauteed zucchini, I almost put the zucchini, grated, in the sauce, but then I didn't want to dilute the flavor of the zucchini so decided to serve it as the vegetable.

I didn't have pasta but I had left over onion and some baby carrots. I spent $5 on stuff to feed 2 people (and there is still half a box of pasta left).

Saute small diced onions and chopped carrots in olive oil until onions are translucent and carrots are soft, add garlic, stir stir stir.

Pour in one small box of crushed or strained tomatoes (I prefer crushed, strained which I accidentally got, are too watery), let simmer while you cook the pasta in salted water.

The side was sauteed zucchini thin sliced coins in olive oil with garlic and a sliced up cibatta from the bakery (that was $1, we split it.)


Five of our 6 ceiling lights are out, so we ate a candle lit dinner :)
Ooo, you can see the steam!

Mexican Dinner for 6 Part Three (making the meal)

First comes the mole, then comes the guacamole then comes the tortilla chips then comes the souffle, Easy! (right?!)

I hopped (actually it took way longer than a hop, more like a bus a walk and a schlep and a bus!) to Target this morning to pick up a coffee grinder in order to pulverize my whole spices.

First step in the mole!
Boil the chicken thighs (calls for turkey but I didn't see turkey thighs at the market) in the chicken broth with 2 bay leaves and for 1 hour. During that hour, make the rest of the mole ingredients! Good luck!


Just kidding. :)


In 2 Tbsp of canola (or vegetable oil) toast your peanuts and almonds; at the last second toss in the sesame seeds to be lightly toasted. Don't over do it! burned nuts are no good! Set aside.

Heat up a dry pan on medium heat, toss in the anise seed, cinnamon stick, whole allspice and whole black peppercorns and heat- stirring until fragrant. Use a coffee bean grinder or mortar and pestle and grind up the spices until very fine.

The chicken has been cooking for almost an hour at this point. Remove form the heat and let the chicken cool in the broth mixture for 30 minutes. Set the chicken aside and keep the broth handy.

While the chicken is cooling, now is the time to prep the chips! Take your corn tortillas, smear a little oil on them (I don't have a pastry brush so I used my fingers) then cut the stack into quarters or sixths. Lay on parchment paper lined cookie sheets and set aside.








Chop tomatoes and combine with soaked chilis and onions (prepped the day before) and toasted nut mix and spices in food processor. Add some chicken broth from the pan and blend until you have a smooth paste. I probably could have blended longer for a finer texture, but I was more interested in being able to fit it all into my little food processor. Be sure you can fit it all if not divide everything into 2 and make 2 batches which you can then mix together.

In another large saucepan, pour some vegetable oil and dump the contents from the food processor in and sautee "until the fat starts rising to the top, about 20 minutes". I don't think I waited for that to happen. Then add in the chocolate, the most infamous ingredient in mole! Once the chooclate was melted, I slowly added chicken stock to the sauce then ignored my instinct and added all the remaining stock like the recipe said. I do not advise this! If you have eated something before that you are making and you are somewhat familiar with it... follow your instincts or look it up online! (I do that whenever I come up with something to cook, just to see if it's been done before). Once the sauce is well stirred and combined you can push it through a sieve for a smoother sauce, or line up your chicken thighs in a 9x13 and pour the sauce over the top. Put in the over at 325 for 1 1/2 hours.

While that is cooking, you can make your guacamole! I left the avocados double paper-bagged on the windowsill. I chose avocados as ripe as I could get the day before and they were perfect the next day! I scooped out the flesh with a spoon into a bowl and began mashing with a fork which proved difficult so I stepped up to a pastry blender! It worked wonderfully! Then I stirred in the previously prepped ingredients (sans chili pepper) and pushed a plastic wrap directly on the surface of teh guac and placed it in the fridge. Placing the plastic directly on (and pushing out air bubbles) prevents oxidization which makes your beautiful green avaocado turn brown.


When the timer on your dinner says 30 minutes, put your first tray of chips in on the bottom rack (or both if you have more than one rack) and bake for about 15 minutes- they shoudl be crisp rather than limp when you slide them off the sheet and sprinkle some sea salt onto them. Trust me, your guests wil be awesed that they are having fresh tortilla chips. And it is way to easy for you that have any excuse not to do it again. The tortilla chips cost $1.19. If I'd gone with the giant pack, Mexican brand we'd have had maybe 4 times as many chips, but I didn't want leftovers. It is a lot cheaper than buying chips that are already made- and you have control over how much and what kind of oil is used. Control is good when it comes to what you are putting in your body.

When there are 15 minutes left on the timer, it's time to prepare the quinoa, according to the package directions. Bring 2 cups of water for every 1 cup quinoa to boil (all at the same time) and cover. Let it boil for about 15 minutes (then take your chicken out of the oven! Dinner for 6 is such a choreographed dance.) Then serve!

Change the oven to 350 (whatever the souffle recipe says the temp needs to be)

About 10 minutes into dinner, remove the souffle form the fridge and put in the oven, set the timer for 25 minutes. The souffle was tasty, it wasn't cooked all the way through and it didn't rise very high but it became something like the combination of a pot de crem and a flourless chocolate cake. The souffle was served with a small scoop of vanilla ice cream. The spice mixture that was used was mostly tasted afterwards- a slight chili burning senesation that remained in your throat after you'd finished your dessert. That Dagoba hot chocolate mix was intense as a drink. I think it's an excellent concept for a souffle but the exact amounts of spices has yet to be explored.

Afterthoughts:

• Follow your instincts in the kitchen
• When a recipe tell you to put in all of something that's left, in particular after it's been cooking a while, question how much they expected it to reduce
• Don't make a souffle the night before if you want it to puff up. It might be possible to make the chocoalte portion and set the eggwhites and chocolate mixture in the fridge until the next day. Then you would take both out to get to room temperature, and then follow the directions from that point on.
  
• Keep track of spending and keep an eye on cheaper options for different ingredients. The bagged mexican spices are cheaper than the organic or small glass jar ones.
  
• If you have access to bulk foods use them. You ingredients will be fresher and you can only buy what you need/ will use in the nearby future.
• Buy a coffee grinder if you want the freshest spices possible. It was easy to crush the spices and they were very fragrant and fresh. Even after washing the platic lid though, it smelled of spices. So I wouldn't recommend interchanging coffee and spices unless you want them to all intermingle.
  
• Have more dinner parties and push what you try to make and keep track of recipes and the cost of ingredients. This meal was about $7.80 per person, (less if you count that there was once piece of chicken left over). For an appetizer, main dish and dessert.
  

Mexican Dinner for 6 Part Two (prep!)

Guacamole
Day before prep:
Chop finely 1/4 of a white onion, 2 medium tomatoes (seeded), approximately 1/4 c. cilantro and 2 (smallish) cloves of garlic. Add juice of 2 limes. Hopefully your limes have more juice than the ones I had. I scraped out the little football shaped lime bits that stick out like fringe after reaming and added them to the mix. I only just bought the avocados today so they are in a brown paper bag ripening as much as they can before tomorrow.



Day of finishing:
Remove flesh of 3 avocados in bowl, stir it all together add salt and a splash lime juice to taste.

Pause for banana bread:









Chocolate Souffles
I've read that souffles can be stored in the fridge for up to 24 hours- so I decided to make these ahead as well (after cleaning up the banana bread I made earlier this evening - a great way to use over ripe bananas! You can even get them for free :-) sometimes from your local health food store if they have brown banana on the shelf .)

To make these spicy I'm using some Dagoba Xocolatl mix in the souffle prep. The hot chocolate was too intense for me but if I use 1 oz of this mix as one of the 6 oz of chocolate the recipe calls for I think it will be a nice hint of spice instead of overwhelming burning spice. We'll see!

In a heat proof bowl set over top of a saucepan filled with water (double boiler)- don't let the water touch the bottom of your bowl!:
5 oz chopped 72% dark chocolate 1 oz Dagoba Xocolatl mix a dash of cinnamon 6 Tbps butter 2 Tbsp water ( or rum or coffee- neither of which I have on hand)

Turn on heat until the chocolate starts melting and the butter is completely melted. Remove from heat and let cool 10 minutes.

While that is cooling separate
4 eggs tossing (or saving for later) 1 yolk. Whip the egg whites in a clean and dry bowl until foamy. Add
1/4 tsp cream of tartar
and mix more. When you have soft peaks that aren't dry (this is something I think you learn from trial and error and carefully watching the sheen of your whites as you mix them) slowly whip in
1/4 cup of sugar.
(I used a little less sugar because the hot chocolate mix already had sugar in it.)

Smear butter on the bottom and up the sides (and inch from the top) of your 1-1/2 quart souffle dish. Sprinkle sugar in and swish around to cover all the buttered surfaces. (The sugar grains on the side of the pan help the souffle climb up the sides of the dish.)

Fold egg whites into chocolate mixture. You don't want to stir is because then you will pop all the little bubbles that give your souffle volume! (Or else you pretty much have a flourless chocolate cake and why would you go through the trouble of whipping the eggs whites if you wanted that!?) Be aure there aren't any (or very minimal) streaks of white and pour the souffle mix into your prepared dish. Cover in plastic wrap immediatly and put in fridge. We'll see tomorrow if the air bubbles actually stay! I've made souffles a handful of times before but never tried making it the day before.













It's been a busy evening, but it will make tomorrow less hectic while I'm trying to make mole!

**EXTRA UPDATE**
KE is running a bit late so I did a little more prep!
For the mole you get dried chilies which you remove the stem and seeds from and soak for 30 minutes, so I'm doing that now. I will pop them in the fridge after I drain them so they will be ready to go tomorrow. If I have more time I might chop some veggies but I want to be ready to go when KE gets here.



Also, something I rarely do but am learning I ought to do more often for dinner parties and gatherings. I made a schedule for meal prep! (This is a little post-it- yes I write small!) Based on the time it will take to cook things and including some prep time- I didn't account for the guacamole but that should only take 10 minutes or so which I can do while the mole bakes for 90 minutes!)

Mexican Dinner for 6 Part One

Menu:

Chips and guacamole
chicken thighs in mole
Spiced chocolate souffles


Part One: Ingredients

For Mole:
Chicken Broth - Low Sodium 2@1.89 $3.78
Bakers chocolate unsweetened $2.57
Blanched Almonds $2.37
Anise Seeds $0.48
Allspice - whole $1.67
Murray's Chicken Thighs (3pkgs) $7.58
Sweet Onion $0.45
Plum Tomatoes 1.2# $2.16
Dried Chile Mulatos $1.49
Peanuts $2.49
Quinoa $5.89
cinnamon stick (have)
black peppercorns (have)
Canola Oli (have)

For the Guacamole and chips:
Cilantro $1.09
Tomatoes 1.6#- a few too many $2.91
3 Hass Avocados $2.73
garlic $0.30
2 limes $0.53
White corn tortillas $1.19
White Onion $0.71
jalapeno (forgot!)
vegetable oil (have)

For the Souffles:
eggs (have)
dark chocolate (have)
spices (have)
sugar (bought in bulk.97#) $1.10
Vanilla ice cream $3.50


TOTAL spent $47.49

The recipes are from the following books but they are adapted based on availability of ingredients and personal preferences:
Mole: Starting with Ingredients
Guacamole: Vegetarian Cooking for Everyone (thanks dad!)
Tortilla Chips: Food Network Website
Souffle: The Joy of Cooking (75th anniversary)

Midweek Dinner Party

Menu:
Moroccan Chicken Soup
Whole Wheat Couscous
Chocolate Gelato

What I had to buy:
$2.63 Chicken broth - low sodium
$2.64 Chicken broth
$1.59 Organic red pepper
$1.38 Zucchini (1 medium one)
$0.46 Cayenne pepper
$1.76 2 Organic onions
$2.35 Butternut Squash
$3.13 Whole Wheat Couscous
$5.88 1.18# Murray's chicken
$3.51 Chocolate Gelato


What I already had:
paprika
cumin
olive oil
cinnamon stick
lemon juice
2 garlic cloves
old saffron

What I left out, cause it was spendy!
$7.00 saffron! (And that was co-op pricing!)

$25.33 TOTAL
$3.16 per serving (8 total)



Moroccan Chicken Soup (Eating Well Cookbook)

1. Combine paprika, cumin and coriander in a small bowl. cut chicken into 1/2 inch strips. Put in bowl and toss with 1Tbsp of spices.

2. Heat oil in a dutch oven of large pot over medium heat. Add chicken and cook until browned, 3-4 min. Transfer to a plate.

3. Add onions and garlic to the pot and cook, stirring until softened. Add saffron, cayenne, cinnamon stick and the remaining spice mixture; cook- stirring for 1 min. Add broth, squash, bell pepper and the chicken. Bring to a boil. Reduce heat to low and simmer, uncovered for 10 minutes. Add zucchini and carrot, simmer until veggies are tender and chicken is cooked through. Discard cinnamon stick. Stir in lemon juice.


Whole Wheat Couscous

Instructions. 1.5 cups water bring to boil. Add 1 cup couscous (butter, oil and salt are optional). Stir, bring to boil again. remove pot, let stand covered for 5 minutes. (I stirred in a little butter.)


Afterthoughts:

How many people did it feed? 3 plus left overs
Total number of servings it made: 7 or 8

The soup took about an hour to prepare and cook... and that was with 3 people prepping. There was a lot of cutting, dicing, grating and stirring. It's a good recipe but not the quickest to prepare on a weeknight.

Serve smaller portions. The couscous makes this hearty soup even more filling.

Couscous is awesome! It cooks so fast, and with a little butter it was fantastic! If I ate it on it own outside the soup I'd probably have added salt as well. I was also tempted to add a little sugar and some cinnamon and make a rice pudding kind of dish out of it.